CHAPTER XLVIII
JANET had scarcely recovered the use of her tired limbs next morning and begun languidly to ‘redd up’ the cottage, with many anxious thoughts in her breast, when an unusual sound of masculine footsteps attracted her attention. She was in a very nervous, vigilant state, expecting she knew not what, although it had seemed as if everything had happened that could happen, now that Joyce had come—and gone so mysteriously: that she should come had always been a possibility before, but now was so no longer. The tramp of these imperative feet, not the slow tread of labouring men, attracted her anxious ear some distance off. She put away her brush and listened. The door stood open though the morning was cold, and a ray of pale and watery sunshine came in. Janet was afraid to look out, with an instant swift intuition and alarm lest somehow her child’s interest might be involved, and she could scarcely be said to be surprised when she saw the Captain, accompanied by an older grey-haired man whom she at once recognised as ‘the Cornel.’ ‘Eh, but I must be careful. She wasna with him after a’,’ said Janet to herself. She had been very tremulous and shaken with fatigue and anxiety, but she braced herself up in a moment and stood firmly on the defensive, whatever might be about to happen. The two gentlemen looked harassed and anxious. They came straight to the cottage door without any pause or hesitation. ‘Is Miss Joyce here?’ the Captain asked breathless, without even mainners to say good morning, as Janet remarked.
‘Na, Captain, she’s no here.’
‘My good woman,’ said the Colonel, breathless, too, ‘don’t be unkind, but tell us where my daughter is. We’ve come from London. I never denied your interest in her—never opposed her love for you. Bellendean will tell you. Let me see Joyce, for God’s sake!’
‘Colonel,’ said Janet, with a little tremble, ‘you should see her if she was in my keeping without such a grand plea. But she’s no here. I thought till this moment she was with—her ain folk.’
‘Don’t try to deceive us,’ cried Captain Bellendean, ‘we have traced her here.’ He was very much agitated to have forgotten his ‘mainners’ in this wonderful way.
‘Track or no track,’ said Janet, ‘you’ll get no lies frae me. Yes, she’s been here. There’s the chair she sat upon only yestreen and late at nicht wi’ Peter and me.’
The Colonel came in and looked at the chair with the instinct of a simple mind. It seemed to throw a certain light upon Joyce’s disappearance. ‘Then where is she now?’ he said, with a sigh of impatience and disappointment. ‘Let me sit down, if you please, for all my strength seems to have gone out of me. Where is she now?’
‘That’s mair than I can tell,’ said Janet with the fervour of undeniable truth.
‘We are in great trouble,’ said Captain Bellendean. ‘She has gone away—in a mistake. Janet, you’re very fond of her, I know. She has been troubled about Halliday the schoolmaster, and—some one else. She has thought the best thing was to go away—and it’s the worst thing. It’s misery to everybody. I know you’re fond of her.’
‘Fond of her!’ said Janet. She said to herself that it was a bonnie question to be asked of her that would give her last drop of blood for Joyce. ‘Ay, ye may say I’m fond of her,’ she replied grimly.
‘And it is all a mistake. She’s taken up a mistaken idea. Halliday had no such claim upon her—nor had—any other. It was altogether a false fear. I would never—for pity’s sake, if you can tell us anything. You know me! She would never be forced to anything. She might have been sure of that,’ the Captain added hurriedly, with a flush of forlorn pride.
‘Eh, Captain,’ said Janet, ‘I would be far, far happier if I kent where she was. She just said, “I’m goin’ on a voyage, and that she had come to see us.” And it was my belief that the Cornel and his lady were just waiting upon her at Leith.’
‘At Leith!’ they both exclaimed. Then Colonel Hayward turned to the Captain with an air of relief. ‘It’s but a little port, isn’t it? We’ll soon be on the track now.’
‘At least,’ said Janet, ‘I’m thinking it was Leith, for where else would she gang to join a ship? but I thought naething but that the Cornel and his lady were waiting upon her—for ane o’ your toors, or whatever you ca’ them,’ she added, with a certain tone of disdain.
‘And she said she was going—where?’
‘She said it would be a long voyage. Ye needna think to trap me, Captain—it’s no like you—as if I was speaking a falsehood with your “Where?” Na; she said not a word to me, but just a long voyage. I would gie my little finger to ken,’ cried Janet, with tears; ‘but she said not a word to me.’
‘Are there boats for America at Leith? God bless my soul! poor little trading things—not even a mail-boat where she could have been comfortable,’ cried the Colonel. And then he added, ‘You must think we’ve been cruel to her to drive her away; but it’s not so—it’s not so. Bellendean will tell you.’
Janet remained grimly silent, offering no contradiction.
As for the Captain, he turned his back upon them both before he gave the called-for testimony. ‘She is flying from love,’ he said, in a choked voice. ‘And to sacrifice herself for—us: and to make us all miserable!’ If he was angry as well as unhappy, there was perhaps little wonder.
‘That’s a’ I can tell ye,’ said Janet. ‘We saw her off from the station, Peter and me. I had nae thought but that her father—her father that she belonged to, that took her from me—would be waitin’ for her at the other end. I never said a word to keep her from her duty to her ain folk; but if I had kent she was her lane, going forth upon the wide world and the sea, on a wild night—Lord! I would have followed her to the ends o’ the earth,’ cried Janet, with hot fervour and tears.
But she said nothing of how far she had followed. How did she know that it might not be prejudicial to Joyce? If Joyce had left them it could not be without reason. No doubt she had kept secret about her destination lest it should be found out by her pursuers. ‘She might have kent me better, that I would have stood for her against all the land and never let on I kent,’ the old woman said to herself. But it was no doubt better that within the strict boundaries of truth she could thus baffle the pursuit and confuse all researches. But what had the Captain to do with it? and what did they mean by flying from love? This gave Janet a cold thrill for many a day.
The search was long, and extended over many seas. Though there was no mail-boat for America, there were, as the Colonel divined, ‘trading things,’ but no trace in any of them of Joyce; and there were ships for the Mediterranean and many other places. Half a dozen times at least they thought they were on her track, but failed and failed again. She had but little money for a long voyage. All indeed was darkness from the time when they traced her to the station at Bellendean. A young lady in company with an old woman had been seen at Leith; but Janet, who alone could have thrown any light on this, remained silent. Indeed, she had no confession to make, for she had only been with Joyce as a watcher is with the object of his stealthy pursuit. And Janet was all the more safe a guardian that she knew absolutely nothing. There never departed from her old eyes the vision of the lamp upon the mast, tossing with the movement of the waves, disappearing into the blackness of the night, a forlorn spark in the immeasurable vacancy of invisible sky and sea. Where had that symbol of humanity gone? what fathomless gloom had it penetrated with its faint-coloured gleam of living? All her superiority over the others lay in the image of that tossing light, and the faint spars it illuminated for a moment in the black gulf of the unknown.
So Joyce disappeared and was seen no more.
Miss Marsham never forgot nor could think, without a sinking of the heart, of that unfortunate night when the oracle had spoken by her mouth, all unaware of the nature of the being addressed, or the tragical matters involved. For the consequences of that self-sacrifice were disastrous all round. The Haywards’ pleasant house was shut up, while they travelled the world, looking for the lost girl. Mrs. Hayward was the most energetic in the pursuit—for the Colonel, though he missed her more, and was more ‘fond’ of Joyce, had neither any sense of wrong to move him, nor any prick of the intolerable such as wrings the heart of an impatient woman, half thinking herself to blame. Canon Jenkinson, though so much less concerned, would probably not have gone to America at all on that famous expedition of his, about which his well-known book was written, had it not been for a hope that in some American school or lecture-hall he would find her, though everybody else failed. Norman Bellendean was affected most of all. He had a dreadful scene with his step-mother, from which that poor lady did not recover for a long time; and instead of going home, and finally allowing himself to be drawn into the natural circle of county politics and relationships, with Greta for his pretty and happy wife, as had been desired and hoped—he went back, sullen and wretched, a misanthrope and woman-hater, to his regiment in India, leaving his estate in the hands of an agent, the house shut up and uninhabited. Greta married after a while, and was just as comfortable as if she had attained the man of her first choice, whose loss it was believed would break her heart. She was the only one quite unaffected by all that had taken place, although her comfort was the one prevailing cause of all this trouble. Mrs. Bellendean was severed once for all from Bellendean and everything near. And yet she could say to herself truly that she meant no harm, that she had never expected serious harm to follow. All she meant was to avert an unsuitable marriage, which it is every woman’s duty to do, by encouraging a girl, who was already engaged, and had no right to accept another man’s attentions, to keep to her plighted word. Perhaps it was hard upon her to suffer so much for so little—and almost harder, seeing that Greta, in whose interests she acted, did not suffer at all.
Andrew Halliday, who also was, so far as he was aware, perfectly innocent, and who never knew what harm he had done by betraying Joyce’s story to the very respectable lady, the minister’s wife, who had been so kind to him—came through the trial as a man of native worth and respectability was likely to do. He waited for some time hoping to hear from Joyce, who, he felt sure, even if circumstances separated her from her family, would communicate with him. He thought the step she had taken ill-judged and excessive, even though it was in consequence of their opposition to the wishes of her heart in respect to himself. ‘These hasty steps are always to be regretted,’ Andrew said, ‘especially as no doubt the Cornel would have been brought to see what was best for her interest if she had but given him a little time.’ But when months came and brought no sign, Andrew’s dignified disapproval changed into a judicial anger. ‘Poor thing,’ he said, ‘she never had any real perception of her own best interests.’ And in course of time he married a very respectable lady with a little money, and was much happier than he could have been with Joyce.
And silence closed over Joyce and all her ways: she sank out of sight as if she had never been. Her name and image lingered in some faithful recollections, then in mystery and silence disappeared, and was seen and heard no more.
It was curious, however, that within a year Janet and Peter Matheson disappeared also from their cottage. They sold their few goods, ‘no able to bide the place after what had happened,’ Janet said. But Peter, instead of echoing this judgment, shook with a long low subterranean laugh, such as used to mark his enjoyment of Joyce’s remarks and pleasant ways. They disappeared and nobody ever knew where they had gone. ‘To their friends in the North,’ the village people said, but nobody before had ever heard of these friends.
It was not till years after that there came a curious rumour to the mainland far away at the most distant point of Scotland, of a great transformation that had been going on in one of the most remote and inaccessible of the isles. Whether it was St. Kilda or the Fair Isle, or some other scrap of rock and mountain in the middle of the wild northern seas, this chronicler has no information. But the legend ran that suddenly, upon a wild wintry afternoon, a lady had landed on that island. Whether her wealth was boundless and her power miraculous, as some said, could not be proved save by rare visitors to the islands. But at all events, there seemed no reason to doubt that she had acquired a wonderful ascendancy, and made many extraordinary changes among the primitive people. She taught them many things, among others what domestic comfort and cleanliness and beneficent learning meant, and knew everything, according to the story. The few sportsmen who touched upon these wild shores were not, however, ever gratified with a sight of this Princess of the Isle. They heard of the lady, but never saw her, and from their wondering accounts and conjectures, it appeared that she was young, and considered by her subjects beautiful. But no stranger nor Englishman, nor any wandering visitor, has ever found out more than this respecting the Lady of the Isle.
THE END